


Masquerade of Suns

by skyshores



Category: Mushishi
Genre: Gen, casefic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-01
Updated: 2015-08-01
Packaged: 2018-04-12 09:11:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4473581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skyshores/pseuds/skyshores
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ginko investigates a village overrun by suns.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Masquerade of Suns

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Miaou Jones (miaoujones)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/miaoujones/gifts).



High summer pulled the greenness all around tall in a race to the sun; underneath were the young roots digging twice as deep down. The sky was golden and heavy, as if it too would collapse from bearing itself upright for so long. Ginko was barefoot in the wet earth, and craving a long, cold sip of barley tea. According to Tanyuu’s instructions and the little map she had drawn, however, he wouldn’t reach the next village until evenfall.

Strangely enough, he did. By then the land had gone flame-coloured in the light still hot and hefty on Ginko’s back. He cupped a hand over his brows and squinted. Upon a wooded slope were oblique houses reaching deep into the mountains. Tanyuu’s contact was in the valley across, but there was no way Ginko could make it before nightfall. This place seemed nice enough. A little boy was dangling his legs off the engawa of the first house, gobbling a slice of ripe watermelon. Now Ginko was hungry as well as thirsty.

“Hey, kid.”

“Hey, mister.”

“Frightening weather, huh?”

“You bet.”

“Is there an inn around here? Somewhere I could get something to eat?”

“You could have just asked.” The kid passed Ginko a giant piece with sticky red fingers. “Welcome to Suzaku.”

“Thanks. May I sit?”

“Mhm.”

Ginko sat. He was about to bite when he saw with his one eye a multitude of glinting suns sharing the stage of the sky. It looked like Ginko would have to make Tanyuu wait a few days more.

“I really need a drink,” Ginko said aloud. At last he bit. The fruit tasted so good he might’ve cried had he not sweat out all the water in his body.

“What do you do, mister? You look like you’re from somewhere really far from here.”

“My name’s Ginko. I’m a travelling mushishi.”

“I’m Tomo. I’ve heard some cool things about people like you.” He put down his final slice. “Say, you think you could help out my uncle?”

“Depends. I’d need to know more about him.”

“He lives in house furthest from here, inside the forest. He told me he built it because he grew out of grandmother’s house. Literally. The ceilings weren’t high enough for him. It looks like it hasn’t helped, though. He’s gone kinda funny in the head recently. I mean, he was always weird. But now he’s weirder. He hides indoors all the time.”

Ginko was fast approaching the rind of the watermelon. He paused. “From what?”

“Dunno. He seems normal if you catch him on a good day. But sometimes his face scrunches up like this and he loses it.” Tomo imitated his uncle’s ugliest rictus. “Grandma’s really worried about him. Says she’ll die of worry because.”

Ginko spared no trace of red flesh. He laid the thin bight of skin on Tomo’s plate. “I see.”

“So, what do you think’s wrong with him?”

“Well, I wonder…” Ginko stretched upright. “Will you walk me to him?”

“Nah. Let’s wait for Koto.”

“Koto?”

“She’s bringing him a home-cooked lunch, ‘cause he doesn’t go out anymore,” Tomo sighed. “My uncle’s a lucky guy…”

“Lunch?”

“Yeah. It’s midday.” Tomo blinked rapidly. Somewhere a door slid open. “Huh, there she is now, two houses down. You better catch up.”

“I’m off, then.” Ginko slipped back into his porous shoes and paced his way to Koto. Behind her wafted a trail of rice and soy. “Excuse me.”

“Yes?” Koto stopped. She was well-dressed and neat in a patterned yukata. “How can I help you?”

“A boy called Tomo is concerned about his uncle. Frankly, I’m more worried about the time of day.”

“Rou?

“I assume.”

Koto began to take smaller steps. “Ah.”

“Have you noticed anything different about him lately?”

Her gaze shirked him. “Well, I think he’s been shutting himself in more and more. I can tell something’s troubling him, though he won’t tell me what’s on his mind. He wasn't like this before.” Her knuckles whitened over her basket. “He used to tell me everything.”

“Hmmm.” At that point, it was highly doubtful that a mushi was at the source of the patient’s problem. The problem was worth a standard inspection, though. “I’m sure he’ll come to his senses.”

Their path was bordered by hydrangeas and irises fleetly blooming in a catalogue of blues. The last house had almost been swallowed by a riot of weeds and wisteria. Beside it was a peculiar belvedere built higher than the highest houses of the most gorgeous capitals, into the boughs of great cedar tree. Rope ladders crissed and crossed to the top. Against the trunk were wooden handholds providing an alternate, but no less perilous, route.

“Rou-chan?” Koto called into the residence. “You forgot to eat again, didn’t you?”

“I had the peaches you left me yesterday.” Rou peeked through the door, wincing as he did so.

“Sorry for intruding,” said Ginko.

“Ah!” Rou slammed the door shut. “Sorry,” he said through a slit of an reopening. “You scared me, appearing out of nowhere, all of a sudden…”

“I’m Ginko.”

“I’m Rou, the fastest fixit on this side of the mountain.”

“You built that lookout yourself?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s impressive. Can I ask why?”

“Well, come in for a drink first. Sorry for the mess.” His silhouette disappeared behind the shouji. Both Ginko and Koto removed their shoes and padded in to find him kneeling in the shade, his face turned away from the slant of light cutting through the room.

The house looked like a wayward twin of Adashino’s shed. Blueprints and rulers and compasses and astrolabes and orreries littered the floor, leaving very little room to sit. Ginko carefully chose a spot in which he wouldn’t be pricked by anything sharp.

Koto closed the door behind her. Rou then spun to face her, eyes softening. “That’s too much.”

“You need to start looking after yourself,” she asserted, pushing the box into his hands. “I won’t be around to do this forever. You’re lucky I made the extra batch.”

“Yes. I owe you for this. If you ever need anything…”

“I’ll know where you are,” she finished for him, standing. Rou did too. Ginko could see that he was a straggly young man once he stretched to his full height before him. He was taller than Ginko, and would look imposing if not for his open face and very large eyes. His hands too were unusually big. Koto lifted her foot, as if to step forward, but was due for the opposite direction.

Rou sat across and placed the lunch before him. “Koto is too good to me. She always makes enough for two. Barley tea?”

“Don’t mind if I do,” Ginko chirped. Rou handed Ginko a pair of chopsticks. “You realise she makes this much for a reason, don’t you?”

“Huh?”

“Nevermind.” Ginko almost drank the whole teapot. “I’m a mushishi. I’m to trade with a friend of a friend over the mountains, but I needed to stop here for rest and supplies. I ran into your nephew. He suggested you might need some help.”

Rou stopped eating and laid his chopsticks over his bowl. “If you’re a mushishi, then, haven’t you noticed?” he said, his eyes darting left and right. “Try to remember the last time you saw the stars.”

“Last night, I presume.”

“But when was last night?”

“I thought it was strange.” Ginko rubbed his chin. He’d have to shave that night. “I just got to your village, but at my pace I should have gotten here by nightfall or later.”

“Right? Something weird’s going on. You can see them, can’t you?” Rou turned his head to the closed door, the paper too thin to withstand the sheet of light that still fell through it.

“The other suns? Then you can see them too.”

“Yeah. Ever since I was a kid. Nobody believed me then, and most wouldn’t now. Koto always does, though I didn’t tell her this time. She’s got enough on her mind already.”

“Not a bad choice.” Ginko scrounged his pocket for a cigarette. “You mind if I smoke?”

“Not at all.”

“So.” Ginko directed his gray breath doorward. “That’s why you’ve been locking yourself in here?”

“Well, wouldn’t anyone who could see—see _that?_ It’s a terrifying sight. I feel as if I’d go blind if I looked directly into it.”

“You’re half-right,” Ginko said, his thoughts tapering off. “What’s with the lookout in the tree?”

“Oh. I finished building it a few years back. I like high places.” Rou moved to the back of the house and slid open the door. The garden was dense with shadow, so it took Ginko a few moments to process the shiny cylindrical vessel in the middle of it. “The truth is, I’m actually trying to build a ship to the stars. I’m really just carrying my grandfather’s torch, though I’ve always wanted to know what was up there, too. Who doesn’t?”

“Indeed.” The trail of smoke meandered towards the congeries of mushi outdoors. “Let me know if you ever do it,” Ginko said, without irony.

“Judging by that backpack, you’re a _travelling_ mushishi, right? You must get around a lot. It’d be great if you notify me of any new advancements in space travel.”

“I won’t make any promises,” Ginko laughed. More saliently, however: “Have you been getting good sleep?”

“Only when it’s still daytime, if at all. No one can tell the time, because the sun never seems to move, or it rains while it does. Koto’s brought me four lunches by now, but we haven’t been able to stargaze in between even once.

“It’s hotter, and I don’t know if the elderly and the young can survive it. It’d be bad if they got heatstroke. On the other hand, our well is never empty. Fruits are bigger and juicier. They’ve grown much faster, too. But they’ll rot as soon in this heat.”

Ginko rolled his smoke between his fingers, eyes flashing to the harmless mushi dancing across the ceiling. “The easiest way to solve the problem is to evacuate the village.”

“Wouldn’t that cause more problems? The nearest village is half a day away. The ones who need to get out most wouldn’t make it.”

“Well, there’s no known weakness of the false suns. Usually, they can’t be seen from ground level in that form. This is when they radiate the most heat, enough to generate growth and rain like a real sun.”

“So all we can do is wait…”

“Yes. Not for long.”

“What do you mean?”

“When they get to this size it means they’re nearing the end of their life cycle.” Ginko flicked the embers off the end of his cigarette and relit it. “For now, they’re in full bloom.”

Rou’s hands fell to his sides. “But what about this heat?”

“If you’re staying, be sure to rest in shade when you can and drink lots of water.”

“There’s nothing else you can do?”

“Depends on the problems that might arise. I’ll stay for a while just in case.”

“Where will we find you if something goes wrong?”

Ginko grinned. “Well, I was wondering about that…”

Rou gave a hermitic response: “I don’t have any extra mattresses, and you need to be closer to the village.” It was difficult to tell where he sat between selfishness and selflessness.

Ginko blew out rings of smoke. “You’ve got an inn, then?”

“My mother’ll take you in. She likes visitors.”

Ginko wiped the sweatdrops off his forehead. At least he was sweating again.“I have to walk down the whole way, don’t I?”

“Uh huh.” Rou turned and rummaged through a shelf. “You can take my parasol, if you want.”

“I will.” Ginko took his drawers on his back and the parasol in his hand. He opened it once outside, but it barely made the walk back to the first house any cooler. There Rou’s mother knelt over the engawa, embroidering a bird with wings of fire into a black sleeve. Her work was exquisite. Ginko let her know what he thought.

“You’re too kind. My son sent you to me?” she asked, as Ginko bowed and introduced himself. “I’m Mie.”

“Rou said you’d be willing to take me in. I’ll pay for the full board, of course.”

“Oh no, of course not!” She lifted a hand and waved it. “Tomo told me he asked you to do a favour for my good-for-nothing son. You’re welcome to stay as long as you need. Food and drink are on us.” Ginko followed Mie to his room. “Here’s where you’ll be staying.”

“Sorry to burden you,” Ginko said, unloading his chest and curling out his futon from the lowest compartment. Once flat, he got a brush and a pot of ink from the drawer at the side. He did his best not to yawn while he wrote a messy question for his uro-san to deliver to Tanyuu. After he finished he turned to his host. “Well then, I might turn in for a nap right now. Please wake me if you need.”

“I will,” Mie said. Ginko had one last swig of water. He also made sure to fluff up his pillow before burying his head in it. He slept long and dreamlessly, until hurled awake by small, strong hands pressed fast against his shoulders. He willed his one eye open. “Ginko-san! Tomo’s…”

Tomo had been laid flat against a futon, unconscious and pale. Ginko propped himself upright and scrambled to the boy’s side. “How long was I asleep?”

“We don’t know,” Mie wept with her hand over her mouth. “He was out picking herbs for Koto. We thought he was taking a while, so we went to find him passed out like this in the fields. But judging by the sun, he couldn’t have been out for more than a few hours. I told him to be back by sunset and—”

Ginko slid his wrist over his forehead to catch the sweat. Now was the right time. “There’s something you should know.”

“What do you mean?” Mie wiped her tears.

“There are mushi afoot in this village.” Ginko swabbed Tomo’s face with a towel submerged in cold water. “They’re causing the heat, the perpetual daylight, your son’s nerves.”

“Perpetual day? But that’s impossible.”

“When was the last time you remember seeing the sun where it was supposed to be?” Mie stayed silent. “It’s strange, right?”

Mie bent forward. “Is it… is it inside my grandson?”

“No. He’s just suffering from regular heat exhaustion. The mushi are somewhere else.”

“Where? What do you suggest we do about it?

“It’s not a mushi I’ve dealt with myself. There’s not too much research on it, either.” Ginko cupped a handful of sea blue smelling salts and held it under Tomo’s nose, which wrinkled with his next breath. He coughed awake. Above his head he sprinkled a row of tiny shell-shaped mushi dredged up from a distant shore. Then with a slab of chalk he drew a box around the beachcomber’s trove. Mie watched him with an incredulous expression. Her brows arched even higher when he handed her a uchiwa. “For now, fan the mushi within this line. You probably can’t see them, but they’ll make sure Tomo’s cool and hydrated.”

Mie haltingly did so. A fresh draft of air gusted from the boundary Ginko had drawn and eddied through the room in whips of coolth.

“Oh,” she gasped. She put the back of her hand against Tomo’s forehead. “It’s working!”

“I would hope so,” Ginko said. Just then a small voice called from the door. “I’ll get that,” he offered, and Mie nodded. He slid open the screen. It was Koto.

She wheezed, “I heard something was the matter with Tomo.”

“He’s all right now,” Ginko assured her.

Koto sighed. “Thank goodness.” A wisp of chilly air escaped from the door. Koto cocked her head. “It feels awfully nice and cool in there.”

“You should go in,” Ginko said. “But first I’d like to ask you a few questions. I’m not sure Mie would be happy to hear the answers. Should we move over there?” Ginko gestured towards the great spread of the lilac tree by the well.

Her shoulders stiffened. “I knew it. He’s not okay?”

“He is.”

She walked slowly and sat on the bench under the creamy froth, scentless from their distance. “Then what’s the issue?”

“I’m trying to figure out something. Has he always been the way he is? A little jumpy?”

Her face was half obscured by the cloudy shadow the blossoms cast across her cheek. “Not at all. We’ve known each other since we were little. As a child I was small and shy and slow. So I was always the joke among the other kids. Rou always stood up for me. He was so tall and big that nobody thought of fighting him. I used to think that was why he was so much closer to the stars than the rest of us.”

“Ah, yes. Tomo mentioned that he’s been building a ship for sailing the sky, and perhaps whatever’s beyond it.”

“For only near his whole life,” she said. “Sometimes I wish he’d stop and appreciate everything we on ground level do for him.”

“He’s a bit of a dense one, I agree. And that lookout? He says he built it himself, but could a man with his cowardice really do it?”

“I did say he wasn’t always like who he is now. He—he had a reputation for being reckless. Taking on wild boars single-handedly, building that lookout without a concern for his safety, picking fights with bandits. He really was the fastest fixit on this side of the mountain. But people liked him because he was honest and open.”

“Well, that’s surprising.” Ginko filled his stomach with a long sip of water from his canteen. “Is there any reason he’s so bent on the stars? He did say his grandfather had a part in it.”

“Yes, he was an astronomist. A good one. His ideas weren’t popular, though, so he could hardly do it for a living. Rou’s mother went back to her hometown every so often with Rou. And he would come back and share with me the stories his grandfather told him, about the stars being traces of other worlds, other suns. I thought they were just that—stories. But Rou believed in them. He believed the rumours about manmade birds of wood and steel taking flight, too, the hollow ones that could fly people over other seas.”

“They’re real,” Ginko said. Koto’s eyes widened, but she did not convey any desire to rebut him.

“How fast times are changing!”

“Yes,” Ginko responded, thinking of whatever else he needed to know. “Ah, was there ever a time that he _wasn’t_ so reckless?”

“Well, he’s never been anything but bold until now.” Koto blinked rapidly. “Except… well, there was this one time.”

Ginko put his cheek into his hand. “Let’s hear it.”

“We were just kids then. Rou had just come back from one of his trips. I had never seen him look so sad! So I tried to cheer him up by catching him a squirrel. To keep as a pet, you know? It was such bad idea! He came with me and we both ended up getting lost in the woods. At first we weren’t worried about getting out; we knew the lay of the land and the sky. But we were in deep, and it was getting dark. We couldn’t tell what flowers surrounded us, or under which stars we stood, because the canopy had blocked them out. We wandered around and eventually he got stuck in a ditch meant for a bear.

“That’s the only time I remember him scared. He thought he would get bitten by a snake, or mauled by a wolf. He was afraid most of all that I would leave him there to die alone. I remember he said, ‘Not yet! There’s still so much I want to do…’ over and over. I thought he’d drown in his own tears, but Mie-san and the villagers found us before then.

“His mother that told me later that his grandfather had died just a few days before. I felt so horrid, that I let him bear that pain all alone, that he would be so cruel to do that to himself, and I resolved to make sure he’d never have to suffer on his own again. I haven’t had to, though; he hasn’t so much as flinched ever since.”

“I see,” Ginko said. The uro-san at his hip rattled unexpectedly. “Ah. Please give me a moment to read this.” Koto lowered her head. Ginko pulled the letter out of the cocoon and corroborated his suspicions with the records written in Tanyuu’s elevated cursive. He looked up at Koto and said, “I think there was a kayou inside Rou’s head.”

“A kayou?”

“It’s a kind of mushi. They’re very uncommon, especially in human patients. They’re about the size of pollen after they hatch from their shells. They long for heights, drifting on winds, and in the bodies of birds when possible. They have a habit of hoarding light and heat, and it’s possible that’s its diet. I thought they had no use for the hosts once they were carried high enough, but it appears that they feed on fear as well. It would explain why there are sometimes sightings of flocks of geese flying straight into predators’ paths. It’s as if the kayou could sense Rou’s panic, as well as his aspiration to the sky...”

Ginko omitted the part about discovering that the kayou was the false sun in another form, and that Rou had probably sneezed the perpetual day into being.

Koto flinched anyway. “You mean all this time he wasn’t himself?”

“Oh no. He was merely without fear. He still had his will; everything he’s done has been done because he wanted to do them. It was just that the obstacles everyone else faces might not have always been there for his consideration.”

“We should go see him,” Koto murmured, her forefinger flexing, scattering the line of her otherwise tightly overlapped hands. “It wouldn’t be fair for him not to know.”

Ginko grinned. Koto didn’t see it. “Perhaps I should leave you two alone?”

“Well, you did say you’re not sure about that mushi. You should come, in case something happens to him.”

“All right,” Ginko said, and followed Koto up the slope for the second time. The suns now emitted a light darker than orange; around them were carmine and deep gold wreaths flickering and undulating in corrugated distortions of heat, penetrating the still green leaves of the maples to the veins.

They found Rou curled up into a ball in the corner of his room, rambling. “It’s so terrible,” he croaked. “The sky’s bleeding that awful colour! How ominous. And the forest, it’ll be dark soon—and the forest—” He turned to Koto with bloodshot eyes. “I can’t sleep. Do you remember the time we got lost in there? I thought I would die—”

“Hush,” she murmured. “You won’t die. I won’t let anything happen to you. Not like last time.”

“Not now? But when? And after that? It’s dreadful, not knowing.” His teeth clattered. “Not knowing if your life will be worth anything in the end, not knowing what’s waiting in the dark, and what the light is, or does. And after. Not knowing what’s after is the worst. And if there’s nothing? It’d be a cycle of unknowing, of undoing.”

Koto smoothed Rou’s shoulders. She looked to Ginko. “Don’t you have a cure for this?”

“It’s nothing mushi-induced. He’s just forgotten his coping mechanisms,” Ginko said. He addressed Rou: “It’s natural to be afraid. But you need to learn when you don’t need to be. Like now. You’re young, and you have your whole life ahead. Isn’t that enough?”

Ginko tried to formulate better advice. There had been the earliest fears of falling, in his dreams, through nothing that could be expressed as a worldly space, slowly, as if he were being dragged down in water, or engulfed in a flux of too much light or sound, sating him to overflowing at the boundaries of physical tolerance: it was certain that falling any farther would end in an utter loss of perception.

“You might experience breathlessness and nausea. It won’t last. It helps to think about things you’re looking forward to: eating your favourite meal, hearing a new song, meeting the person you like, smelling spring flowers, sailing beyond the stars. Focus on the good prospects, instead of dwelling on only the bad. Breathe from your mouth, if it’s difficult to do it from your nose.”

Rou squeezed his eyes shut and did as told. The rocking and shivering subsided in time. Eventually he opened his eyes at Koto’s behest.

“Look!” she said, taking his hand. At first he pulled away without letting go, positioning his body as far away from the door as possible. Rou would have to summon courage again, rather than rest on mere fearlessness. “Isn’t that incredible?” Koto prodded once more with a gasp. “Let’s go to the lookout.”

Rou’s trust in Koto seemed to overcome his need for escape. In defeat, he lifted his head to the sky, which threw small stars into his dark eyes. He learned bravery again. He let himself be led up the big cedar tree by Koto’s hands and voice. Ginko was content watching the show from ground level.

The light fell away from the sky slowly. To the naked eye, at the moment of death, sunset colours typically stacked in a certain order atop the horizon would appear in inverse rank in dozens of sets of concentric tiers. At the centre would be star-speckled navy, and around it a ring of white, which bled into golds and reds, pinks and purples, greens and blues. To Ginko, the suns burst in dandelion-shape against the true night, contracting before exploding languidly into great petals of every colour. Alongside the false light black hair still glowed in linings of bronze and fiery gold. How incredible that mushi so far from the light vein could exude such luminance, as if its display were proof of the intensity of lives they had lived. The mushi wanted to be remembered for their brilliance, and beauty, for how close they were to infinity. And they would be.

There the stars were, still set in their celestial course, in the roles the earthbound imagined for them: the child riding in the swing of her parent’s arms, the drum and the zither, cowherd and weaver, flock of crows and solitary eagle, creatures of myth, planets the gods hoarded in their greater palaces of agate and jade. And there the moon was, white, round, inviting, close enough to pluck.

Ginko held his hands aloft to receive the seeds of the kayou. Soon he held in between his fingers crystals forged in the kilns of the sky, catching the moonlight and casting back it out in a spectrum of colours unknown to the human eye. He made sure two set aside at least two: one for a bored, sequestered scribe, another for a haggling game with an unsuspecting doctor.

In the lookout above, Koto’s forefinger was directed at a meteor, and Rou’s head was tilted very far back to see it.

Ginko had not felt so tired in a long time. On a whim he reclined over the greensward. He put his head to the grass. He used to do this all the time, half his life ago, with no roof over his head, but the whole world as his house. He had seldom wondered like so many others what distant lamps shed the light on it, when there was so much effulgence in the world, and the river under the earth, and enough within the self, within sleep, to be blinding.

He fell asleep under the stars, dreaming soft dreams of mauve and maroon and violaceous silks and knotted nimbi of breath and smoke, and of his haunt of a seaside shack, and of a plane of white light too vast to traverse, but he didn’t know it until the next day, when he wasn’t sure whether to be more started by the dream or his sudden waking to the one white sun in a blue sky.

“So,” he said, lighting up a cigarette, “I guess I’m still here.”

It might be easier to do what he did, if he could live to be rich enough to board a plane. There might be millions of uncharted mushi species in a world so far from theirs that it could not even be seen as a star. Perhaps his roots were too deep in the earth for it even to be possible for him to go there. Ginko shook his head. There was no use guessing what he’d miss after all. For now, he was content with walking.

 

* * *

 

In the autumn colours of October, Ginko returned to Suzaku with a new pair of shoes.

There were no kayou looming over it this time. As he strolled up the pavement to the first house he heard two women squabbling amicably.

“Please take these,” the shorter woman implored the slightly taller one, pushing a crate into her arms. “I’ve lost another tooth, so I couldn’t chew these even if I wanted to. It’d be a waste to let them rot here.”

“I couldn’t! You’ve got Tomo to feed. He’s a growing boy, and—”

“I’ll have none of that. Take them. You _must._ I’ll carry them up this hill myself.

As Ginko got closer he realised the women were Mie and Koto, grappling over a bundle of the year’s many-coloured harvest. Mie had not aged a day, despite her protestations. Koto looked different, but Ginko couldn’t put his finger on why.

“Yo,” Ginko said. “Have you both been faring well?”

Mie’s eyelids fluttered in surprise. “Oh, it’s you! I never did thank you properly for saving my grandson, so thank you. Do me another a favour, dearie, and help my daughter carry these up the mountain. It’s not good for her to push herself like this when there’s a baby on the way.” She raised a fist. “I swear, one day I’ll let that good-for-nothing son have it…”

Ginko grimaced at the thought of climbing up that hill for the third time. “It looks like I’ve missed the wedding,” he said casually. He took the crate into his arms and started walking.

“The both of you come back for dinner, you hear?” Mie called by the time they passed the shedding lilac tree.

“Yes, ma’am,” Koto called back.

“So, you finally did it,” Ginko chuckled. “It took you both a while.”

“Was it that obvious?” Koto said, habitually sweeping the ground with her eyes.

Ginko shrugged. “Maybe not to you two.”

“You know, I wondered what having no fear took from him for a long time. When you told me that it was a mushi that made him as fearless he was,” she said. “How would I know if I was worth his courage?”

“Why not just ask him why he never posed the question?” Koto looked at him for the first time since they began their stroll. “Maybe it just didn’t cross his mind.”

At the end of the walk Rou came out and relieved Ginko of the crate. He seemed neither fearless nor fearful when he looked up at the sky, but Ginko noticed that he had built another lookout a tier above the first. “Lucky you were there to carry this for my wife,” he said. He turned to Koto, whose face was a sunflower to his gaze. “You shouldn’t strain yourself.”

“Ah, right. I hear there’s to be a little one soon.” Ginko unloaded a few jars of mermaid scales, an ubusuna counter, and a nest of kappa’s eggs. “I have a few things that might be helpful in the next few months. I’ll give them to you as thanks for last time.”

“We couldn’t possibly accept them without paying you in kind,” Rou insisted.

Ginko grinned. “That previous episode was plenty.” He hoisted his pack over his back. “Well, I’m off.”

“Not so fast,” Koto said. “At least stay for dinner! I know Tomo’d appreciate you stopping by a little longer.”

“Sorry, I’m a little tight on time. Maybe next year.”

Upon his second rebuttal of Koto’s invitation, Rou said, “Well, why don’t you think about it for a bit? Mother’s as good at cooking as she is at embroidery. Consider it on the lookout. I’ve reinforced it and added proper steps for the kid. The view’s so pretty this time of year.”

“I guess it couldn’t hurt,” Ginko mumbled, with regards to the climb and the dinner. Rou took his drawers inside. Ginko sighed on his way up, wondering how Rou’s spaceship was getting on.

Upon ascension, Ginko’s first impulse was to look down. A rectangle of light shone through the open door before him. Within it were the laughing couple, who could still be heard from the upper branches of the cedar tree beside the house. A pair of cranes flew overhead, broad-winged and sure-breasted, higher and higher and higher still. In which river would they choose to fish?


End file.
